UK small businesses ‘ditching desktop for the cloud’

SMBs are ditching desktop for the cloud, says an accounting software firm, as new IDC data shows that cloud spend is increasing.

Xero has seen a record 36,000 UK customers sign up to use its cloud accounting and payroll app to manage their finances since March 31st 2014, with 83,000 UK small businesses now using the cloud-based software, compared with 47,000 this time last year.

Gary Turner, managing director at Xero UK, said: "Xero’s record customer growth in the UK over the last 12 months reflects a growing preference among small businesses for innovative cloud products and the rejection of ageing, disconnected desktop software."

The news comes as IT infrastructure spending (server, disk storage, and ethernet switch) for public and private cloud across EMEA grew by 27 per cent to reach $1.1 billion in revenue in Q4 2014 and around $4.1 billion for the whole year, with 28 per cent growth over 2013.

In terms of storage capacity, cloud represented around 32 per cent of total EMEA capacity in Q4 2014, with 52 per cent growth over the same period a year before, according to IDC data tracking Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Lenovo, NetApp, major ODM vendors and more.

IDC said in a statement: "IDC expects this market to reach a value of $10.8 billion by 2019, or 39 per cent of the total market expenditure, representing one of the areas of tremendous growth for the European infrastructure sector, compared to the expectation of a stagnant, if not declining, traditional market."

Western Europe accounted for about 82 per cent of the EMEA cloud business in 2014 and saw its cloud investment rise from 15 per cent of the datacenter infrastructure spending in 2013 to 19 per cent in 2014.

The emerging markets of Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa captured 18 per cent of EMEA cloud investments in 2014. Despite that the fact that the value in CEE was near double that of MEA, the latter is growing at a faster double-digit rate, in comparison to 2013.

Elsewhere, European managed IT services provider Claranet has announced it will work with VMware to develop new cloud services, such as enhanced automation and orchestration of hybrid cloud services on an enterprise level, based on the latest VMware technologies (including VMware NSX, vCloud Director and vRealize Orchestrator).